Aggregated Anxieties: More Vexing Problems for Small Business in the “Affordable Care Act”

One of the more vexing concerns for small business is the Obamacare employer mandate. We pay 100% of our employee’s healthcare. Still just the invasiveness of the law and the dread of added paperwork is a drag on business. With 40 FTE it is always in the back of my mind. Next up, we face the challenge as to whether our healthcare plan stack up to Obamacare rules and regulations. The way the law has been manipulated and changed, it is of little comfort we believe we have a very comprehensive plan.

While President Obama assured us that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would not affect small business, that’s simply not true. Yes, it is accurate to say that most businesses with under 50 employees will be free from the most burdensome regulatory imposition under the Act—i.e. the “Employer Mandate.” That’s the requirement that says that businesses with 50 or more full-time, or full-time equivalent, employees must offer qualifying affordable health insurance. But it’s unfortunately quite complicated for businesses on the cusp to figure out whether in fact they are subject to the mandate. It really requires businesses to go back and look at their employee hours over the past several months to figure out how much time they have worked on average, and to do a series of calculations on each employee. That can be cumbersome, time-consuming and exhausting for a business owner, trying to juggle other things to keep his…